BAGs

[Wilson Gray]

"_For an example_ ..."? Didn't that used to be "as an example" or "for
example"?

-Wilson

On 3/18/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      BAGs
>
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>
> From an article on NSA data-mining in the National Journal:
>
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> http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0306/031706nj1.htm
> While the NSA was searching for the next generation of data-sifters,
> it continued to rely on less sophisticated tools. _For an example_, the
> former government official who spoke to NJ cited applications that
> organize data into broad categories, allowing analysts to see some
> relationships but obscuring some of the nuance in the underlying
> information. The results of this kind of category analysis can be
> displayed on a graph.
> But the graph might reveal only how many times a particular word
> appears in a conversation, not necessarily the significance of the
> word or how it relates to other words. Technologists sarcastically
> call these diagrams BAGs -- big-ass graphs.
> -----
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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